


Getting Ugly in the Beauty Salon

by limervnce



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Racism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-10-20 15:43:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20677853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/limervnce/pseuds/limervnce
Summary: 'Those lips say drama!Those lips say infidelity!Those lips say murder!So aren't you pleased?'-In a state of gossip-filled chaos and in the midst of a battle to be on top, two women come to their local neglected salon on every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday to discuss matters such as their neighbours' affairs and family members' dark histories. But what initially began as a way to try and create waves in the monotonous sea of everyday life, soon becomes a gruelling addiction to attention. And as the ugly behind-the-scenes of every person soon make their way out, so do the stories of our two women.Until it's just a matter of who cracks first.Copyright © by LIMERVNCE





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Check tags for warnings.
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7nFfMGlLrbjoZ9yLB9GcXT?si=aQ47Bo03RyKoSAVDRVRhfg

A large pair of kitchen scissors fell down the stairs, barely two inches away from my head.

It was 1.34pm on an unfortunate Sunday afternoon. Tina's Beauty Salon was filled with disinterested regulars, half of which were packed like sardines in the waiting room and half of which were sitting on cheap leather recliners. Almost twenty busy bodies were rushing in and out of the faded, termite-eaten door leading to the storage room at the back. The scent of nail polish from half-empty bottles left open was enough to give me a slight headache as the lady at the front desk pushed aside the room-dividing curtains and ushered me towards an empty chair.

"Please wait here. I'll send one of the women in for your haircut," she chirped with an obnoxious tone of faux enthusiasm, heading back out to the reception.  
The sad yellow paint of the walls had been chipped and the only pieces of furniture in the room were three black rotating chairs, one small set of glossy black plastic drawers, along with the individual mirrors placed in front of the chairs, which just happened to be screaming _'You look so ugly right now!'._

It was quite a miserable little place.

On my left and right, there were two women, in their mid-thirties, accompanied by two young hairdressers who were patiently snipping away their dirty-blonde hair. The amateur hairdressers were quietly giggling at each other while trying to give the final touches on the now-uneven hair. The two women, however, were sitting smugly in the two other chairs in the room with their phones propped up in their little sausage fingers. In addition, an occasional throaty cackle could be heard from the second floor.

It's not like I wanted to be here.

A woman in her early twenties hastily skidded over to me, holding a pair of silver scissors in her hands. With fuchsia lipstick in her teeth, she grinned widely and raised her too-thin penciled eyebrows.  
"You're here for a haircut, right? I think you'll have to come upstairs because all the chairs are going to be occupied here," she explained.  
Even though I was sitting in last chair, I decided to give Tessa, as I had read on her scratched name tag, a break. Because behind that fake smile and horrendously thick eyeliner eyes, I could see she was just one more human interaction from a mental break down. We made our way upstairs, a pair of Jimmy Choo stilettos and a pair of worn out pumps clicking lightly against the linoleum.

What I saw upstairs was both a mess and a work of art.  
A group of seven women were sprawled out on hair wash stations, all in matching emerald green satin robes, tied at their waists. With their hair in the marble basins, the women were Greek goddesses on the dusty chairs. It was picturesque scene, with the women being the only beings making this rundown salon anything worth more than a few dollars. I walked past all seven stations, towards a chair in front of another patronising mirror. I sat down, still eyeing the women from the mirror. All of them looked like they were in their late twenties. They all had their attention drawn to the woman in the middle, who I supposed was the superior.

The hairdresser placed a sheet over my clothes. The woman sat upright, disregarding the shampoo now dripping down from her head. Tessa rummaged through a set of drawers for a comb. The woman quietly whispered something to someone else sitting on her left. It seems as though I was the centre of attention. Not that I mind, though. Attention is attention, good or bad. And who doesn't love being the star of the show?

Tessa was just about to lean forward to ask me what kind of cut I wanted, when the woman pointed a finger at me, and exclaimed, "Excuse me! What's your name?"

"Ava. Ava Myers."

"Well, Ava Myers, I'm Vivienne. Is this your first time coming to Tina's?"

Vivienne was a deity in human form. A lather of shampoo reeking of toxic chemicals was present on her bunched-up mahogany hair, contrasting with her clear olive skin. Curious eyes and wine-red lips waited for my answer with a patient pout. I gave an indifferent nod, hoping that it would shut Vivienne up. But she continued, "I come here every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday to meet these lovely ladies. We talk about everything with each other. It's very..."

"Therapeutic!" The woman who Vivienne had been whispering too earlier had conveniently interrupted us – a pitiful sidekick, perhaps?

From her less impressive slightly chapped lips, smothered with a plain old lip balm, to her thin silver-framed glasses, and lastly that completely hypnotized look of awe in her downturned eyes, at first glance anyone could tell that she was just Vivienne's minion. Her high-pitched voice left my ears ringing and I had already learned to dislike her, but evidently nothing was going my way because she continued to drone on.

"My name's Amy. Wow, I love your shirt! Is it from Forever 21? Because I think I saw something similar a few days a-"

"It's Chanel."

"Oh."

"Anyway, I wanted to ask if you'd like to be a part of our little 'community'. We like to have interesting members in our group, and well...you are quite the interesting figure," Vivienne explained, scanning me up and down.

It was true. I was the cynosure of all eyes in the room. My Chanel blouse was so gracefully half unbuttoned from the top, showing a bit too much of what was taught to me to be kept inside. Well, at least it was long enough to just barely cover my ass. There would've been a problem if it didn't; I was wearing only underwear underneath. The whole look was tied together with stilettos which made your feet hurt after walking two steps in them and a beret sitting on top.

How chic.

Just as the sleep-deprived Tessa was about to bounce back into the scene and repeat her question, the queen herself, Vivienne, spoke once again, "Sweetie, what do you want?"  
After a moment of fruitless thought, I replied, "Change. I want change."  
Vivienne's eyes lit up with sudden interest. She beckoned Tessa, to whom she gave elaborate instructions. Words regarding ‘black hair dye’, ‘shoulder-length’ and ‘bangs’ echoed aimlessly around the room. Throughout the hushed murmuring, I didn't object once. I wanted something new – something different. And what better way to do that than by letting a stranger in a salon play God and make decisions for you.

As Tessa skidded back over to me, I spun the chair around, now facing the group. As my hair went from being yanked in direction directions and being cut from awkward angles, Vivienne spoke over the bumbling hairdresser.

"This place is so boring. That's why I started coming to the salon in the first place. Ava, I'm twenty-seven years old and I've been coming here since I was nineteen. How old are you, anyway?"

"Twenty-four."

"A little late, but that's better than never!"

When the hairdresser was done meticulously snipping the ends of my hair, she took a large chunk of my hair at the front and hurriedly analysed my hair, probably having an internal discussion on how to cut bangs as the uncertainty on her face showed. She brought the sleek steel scissors right above my brows, the cool metal pressing against my skin. Before she snipped any further, she looked at me once again, needing confirmation directly from me this time.

I was almost going to stop her.

I was almost about to cry out, "No! Stop, you've done enough!"

But the damage had already been done. Inches and inches of hair were strewn all over the floor, with Tessa standing in a pool of hair now. My hair was already at my shoulders. What was the point of backing down now? I needed to go all out. I gave Tessa a small nod, a signal for her to continue. The scissors slid so smoothly across my hair that it had barely taken a second. She carried on trying to smoothen out the cut, making sure to pull my hair again and again and again.

Vivienne was right though. This was such a boring town. I needed something new. Something exciting. Something interesting. Something dramatic. I just needed something.  
"And what exactly do you talk about on these Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays?" I asked finally.

"Well, uh...never-mind, screw it. We talk about the latest gossip. But then again, there's only two ways a young single woman can keep herself busy in this place. This option just seems more convenient because it's the one that doesn't require a vibrator." Vivienne sighed.

The room was filled with silence once again, with Vivienne dreamily staring off into space and Tessa dragging me to a similar recliner. She began brushing on the cold sludgy dye mixture on to my hair, a blend of new toxic chemical smells wafting in the air.

Gossip. Rumours. Backbiting. Idle talk. Whispering campaigns.  
Perhaps this was the 'something' that I needed. This was my one-way ticket out of boredom and monotony and repeating the same cycle every day, not giving a damn about how the rest of the world worked. Maybe Vivienne was a god or my saviour, at least. Saving me from just about getting lost in the dullness of this town.  
Change.  
Change.  
_Change_. I needed change; something new.

It was like The Creation of Adam all over again: Vivienne, an ethereal divinity, just reaching out to me with her confidants and providing me with an opportunity. She was giving birth to a new creation; the new and reformed Miss Ava Myers.

Tessa washed out the hair dye from my hair in a similar marble basin, splashing warm water down my neck even though she tried paying attention to detail. Bony fingers ran through my hair repeatedly, in an attempt to fully wash out the stubborn dollar store dye. Satisfied with the results, the incompetent hairdresser shifted me back to my original spot. She fished through the drawers once more, now looking for a hairdryer and brush. It wasn't long before I felt hot air being pushed against my neck and a metal bristles snaking their way into my hair. Just before Tessa got close to burning my neck, she immediately pulled away the wheezing hairdryer and replaced it with a straightener.  
Oh boy, we're in for a lot of hair damage.

"So, will we see you this Tuesday?" Vivienne asked, a hopeful half smile on her wine lips.

Meanwhile, the hairdresser gave the finishing touches, gliding the straightener again and again across my hair, making sure she caught every strand. I stood up immediately, heading downstairs towards the reception to pay without taking a second glance at the small clique. After being greeted by the receptionist once again, I pulled out the money and placed it neatly on the bulky plywood desk. The lady lunged forward to grab it and started rapidly counting the notes, stopping to shove them in a simple drawer. She grinned cheerfully at the sight of the bills, her eyes crinkling slightly.  
"Thank you for coming to Tina's! Please come again soon," she exclaimed giddily.

As I walked out the door, the painfully high stilettos clicking rhythmically, I thought about it over and over.

Change. Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Convincing wine lips. An opportunity.

New things.

And although my bangs were uneven and slightly shorter from the right, something about that dilapidated building and its people was so captivating.  
Captivating and attractive enough that I would be compelled to make another visit on the following Tuesday.


	2. Chapter 2

Click, clack, click. High heels strutted across the linoleum floor and the hollow sound began to ring in my ears. The putrid stench of dollar-store air freshener wafted through the air, mingling with the smell of burnt hair and nail polish. It was a Tuesday and I was here, yet again, in the same warehouse-of-a-salon. Perhaps it's déjà vu, or maybe it was my loss in the fight against temptation and curiosity.

The same money-starved receptionist greeted me before I made my way from the waiting area into the main area, as there wasn't much of a line outside and there were bound to be some empty chairs. The receptionist hastily turned to a worker nearby, signaling for her to follow me past the curtains.

Soon enough, I was able to spot her; Vivienne and her friends were all lined up in a row, with their arms and legs laid out and a separate group of beauticians attending to them specifically. There was a quick tug followed by a sharp yelp and I was just about to consider leaving after witnessing the waxing fiasco, when I-

"Ava!"

I turned on my heels, taking a deep breath to maintain my composure. Vivienne spread out a madman-like grin, obviously delighted to see that I had given in and accepted her offer. With the snap of her finger, I was being rushed over to another chair and a woman from the group of ladies with the deadly wax slithered over to me with her equipment. I casually dismissed her, earning a quick nod. Instead, I motioned over to an employee in charge of manicures and she scurried over to me with a clear plastic box full of her tools. The girl sat down at my right, the water in her bowl sloshing around repeatedly.

“You know, I have a neighbor and god, she’s unbelievable,” Vivienne remarked. “She has a different man coming to her house each night. A friend of mine even told me that she used to work as a prostitute up until last year.” She peered at her arms, satisfied with the red burn-like marks from the wax. “In my opinion, it’s shameful. Can you imagine selling something so precious for a quick buck? I don’t know why people do it.” The look of contentment on her face, from the patterns on her arms, became a distorted amalgamation of disgust, distaste and a dash of wine-red lipstick, but a smile soon spread across her face.

“But there’s one thing I do know. She’s an absolute whore.”

I sat there unblinkingly, embraced by the comfortable silence in the room, under the gaze of an unnecessarily proud Vivienne. Amy giggled silently, though I wasn’t able to pinpoint whether it was because of Vivienne’s words or at the thought of the promiscuous neighbor she spoke of. I had the strong urge to roll my eyes, but I refrained from it. I couldn’t afford to upset the only thing that had the ability to salvage me.

The Vietnamese girl sitting at my feet gently filed away my nails, inattentive and oblivious to Vivienne’s forked tongue. She looked no older than 19, her newly acquired but not fully mastered skill becoming apparent with every hiss that escaped my lips. She filed them painstakingly slowly, making sure to perfect every curve. She brought the bowl of sloshing water to me, wordless and half-expecting me to play along. And I did. I placed my hands in the lukewarm water, silence becoming our common language. I didn’t know or care for her name. The dyed caramel-brown ponytail, neat fitted uniform t-shirt and almost innocent eyes were enough for me to understand who she was.

Vivienne waited patiently as another lady piled up wax on her legs, spreading it idly. She began going off on a tangent about her family, what each of them did, their careers varying from doctors, lawyers, housewives, architects and businessmen. She explained her current unemployment and how she had practically inherited a fortune after her grandmother’s death. The rest of the group nodded, knowingly, as if this were something they had memorized by heart – the holy declaration. The reason for Vivienne’s unquenchable thirst for gossip slowly revealed itself, like a butterfly post-metamorphosis. Between the lack of a job, unlimited riches and busy family, she had nothing to do. The uniformity of regular people’s lives was unimpressive to her and I found myself connecting the dots of the similarities between her and I. Both of us were rebelling against routine, the normalcy of it all overburdening. 

The emerald satin fell across Vivienne’s shoulders gracefully, pooling in her lap. She adjusted herself in her chair and turned to me once again, the silence seemingly becoming too boring for her. “Ava, tell us a little more about yourself. What did you study? Where do you live? Oh, are you seeing anyone currently? It’s ok if you aren’t, because I can easily arrange-”

“Yes, I am seeing someone, so you don’t need to,” I interrupted.

Her ears perked up and fascination made an appearance in her light brown eyes. Of course, that was the most important thing Vivienne could ever know about me – who I was with. And so, I told her about my partner, the man who I had been seeing for three years now. I told her that he worked as a professor at a university and that he never let his students down. I told her about his character, the rich philosophy infused deep in his blood and his carefree spirit which brought me numerous experiences . I told her about his money, the generous salary which allowed me to lounge in the elaborate designer wear. I told her about how I loved him, and how I was happy to have him, and how I’d have it no other way.

_Gold-digger, gold-digger._

The Vietnamese girl held out a tray of disorganized nail polish bottles, balancing it in her arms with utmost care. Half of the shades were obnoxiously bright and others were visibly dried out. Eventually I had the option to choose between nude, nude, pink, darker nude and white. I picked up one of the drugstore nude nail polishes and handed it to _Manicures_, the only name that seemed suitable for the conscientious employee. She nodded slowly, more engrossed in the music playing from her earbuds than the backstories which were being unraveled in front of her very eyes. I guess you could say she had a talent; the blessing of not requiring your name to be in everyone’s mouths. She wasn’t trying to leave an impression on others like everyone else in this rat-race was. But maybe she was a complete fool for ignoring her surroundings and dissociating herself from the need to compete for the top position; minding your own business never got you anywhere. You had to be nosy and overshare just to get your name into the books.

The top was my final destination, and I was determined to get there, for all that it was worth. I needed prying eyes and a new story to circulate, just to feel something other than nothing. This town was so incredibly boring. I needed pieces of gossip to down with bottles of alcohol tumbling soon after. I needed someone to make this life interesting. The love I had once found in living life was fading faster than ghostly condensation on cold glass. Attention was the only thing I craved at this point, and the withdrawals of the goddamned drug were starting to itch at my lips and heart. Spilling something worth of a rumor had never felt so easy.  
If this is what he wanted, I’d do it within a heartbeat. I’d make my name something worth talking about, something that wouldn’t leave anyone’s mind for even a split second. If I had to be outrageous, I knew how to make jaws drop and heads turn; it was only a matter of provoking me and I had already been set off like a ticking bomb. I’d out-do everyone and I was sure of it. Through Vivienne, I’d become the talk of the town, and once again, I’d be something worth his attention.


	3. Chapter 3

It had all begun three years ago.

Working as a part-time waitress hadn't been difficult in itself, but the customers and people whom I had to face daily had often made me want to shoot myself in the face. It was a mundane routine; we came to work, took a few orders and dealt with the occasional brusque customer.

'Remember, the customer's always right,' Abigail had lectured. I still remember the day I was handed a crisp black apron, a tray painted with ketchup and this last piece of advice.

Abigail, the flustered and incompetent manager, had been running around blowing off the top of head at the entire staff the day I was hired. The training I lacked was never delivered to me and as a result I was left to fend for myself amongst a group of predatory cooks and waiters, all eyeing me like prey. I was expected to pull decency and hospitality out of my ass and present it on a silver platter.

To this day I still can’t comprehend the joint’s level of desperation at the time. My resume had been a poor excuse of a list of simple skills reworded to portray me as the next Newton or Mother Theresa. Just barely dragging myself through college and passing with mediocre grades made me realize that there wasn’t really any hope for me to do anything big in life, so I’d have to settle for any job I could get to make ends meet. The humiliating empty space in my resume where my work experience should have been, laughed at me and yet here I was, job in hand. 

That didn’t necessarily mean I was compelled to like it. In fact, every day was incessant torture. After all, a gazelle was still a gazelle and lions were still lions in the playing field. Fresh blood was something none of their gazes could avoid for long. I worked tirelessly, scrubbing away my amateurish first impression on the staff, in the reflection of a thousand knives and forks. I can’t even begin to count the minutes I spent cleaning children’s messes, the hours I worked overtime or all the time I spent dealing with moronic customers, and I most definitely can’t quantify the time I wasted trying to do better.

Nothing I did was better.

I was starved of acknowledgments, appreciation and most importantly, promotions. I so desperately wanted a promotion. Even Carla had managed to get a promotion before me and she’d rarely clock in to cover her shifts. Absolutely no one cared about when or what you did. But maybe they cared about who you did.

It had all begun three ago, when I met thoughtful eyebrows, a clever smile and all the appreciation I had ever wished for.

I first had the pleasure of meeting Tom on what I thought had been one of the worst days at the diner. I had already gone two hours overtime, courtesy of my coworkers’ fabricated commitments, I had gotten yelled at in the afternoon for walking in a minute late and I was pretty sure that I had heard my coworkers planning a dinner together but without me. 6pm and I already felt exhaustion pulling my soul out of my body. Tears threatened to smudge my mascara, all until Tom entered the deadbeat diner, his charisma radiating from miles away. I swallowed the lump in my throat and moved towards his table, repeating the infamous line I was forced to memorize.

“Hi, welcome to Annie’s. May I take your order?”

To this day I think about the first smile he gave me, but I can never seem to wrap my head around why I received that smile. A neat stubbled face stared back at me with a smile that made my cheeks want to burn intensely. In that moment, I don’t think I could have predicted anything that happened next. I found myself listening to every word he uttered about cheeseburgers as if they were a revelation. He was a smooth talker and I loved each word he said because with that smile, I had received what I had been craving. I received the encouragement that I needed because perhaps, my ‘doing better’ finally amounted to something.

“What’s your name?” he had asked.

“Can I know yours first?” I retorted.

After a minute of thought, he chuckled and answered the small request, “I’m Tom.”

“Avery.”

“That’s a nice name…but can I call you Ava? I think it’ll sound even better on you.”

Of course, I couldn’t refuse. I nodded, pleased with the new name which a charming stranger had so easily assigned to me.

Things got even better when he began coming to Annie’s almost every other day. I didn’t understand why he came back to a below-average fast food joint, but I couldn’t dare to complain. Seeing those piercing blue eyes every once-in-a-while pushed me to try harder. Frequent visits brought him closer to me. Our conversations got longer, his jokes became funnier, my laughter grew louder, his smile became more endearing and his flirting increased significantly.

“Ava, can I get your number? I think I’d like to get to know you better,” he said. My number went flying out of my mouth even before I could properly process what Tom had said. And with that single number began the endless phone calls and addictive text messages, the first steps towards something bigger and better.

Our first date had consisted of an expensive dinner at a restaurant with a name I’d rather not attempt to pronounce. I had felt awkwardly out of place, never having been to such places because I had never seen the point of it. The chandeliers gleamed idly, the dim light being the only thing that helped me see the person sitting across the table. The scarlet lobster lay dead on the table, its eyes unnerving and seeing right through me. Even the lobster had been dressed up better than me, the greens of the fresh salad accentuating the gleam of the lobster’s shell. Dozens of eyes stared at the young twenty-one-year-old in a shabby sheath dress, the deep green hues of the dress making her look even more sickly.

Despite their fixed gazes, Tom had made me feel comfortable. Throughout the night he had managed to capture all of my unwavering attention, with stories about his job as a professor at an extremely prestigious college, tales from times when he had hung out with his friends and by dropping the bomb of the oh-so-little fact that he was thirty-one years-old. 10 years. A decade, indeed, but a decade that evoked curiosity, desperation, yearning and an appetite for something bold. I had decided to linger just a little longer, to dip my feet in the waters and test them.

Minutes and hours soon slipped through our fingers, fading into the blackness of the night as Tom told me about the hilarious slips his students often made in their assignments and I couldn’t help but think about how ironic it was that another college student’s stupidity was being mocked in front of me, the barely-passing graduate. The polarity of our two worlds was astounding but with every step forward I began to forget how to go back to my own. Becoming a permanent resident of Tom-town became increasingly appealing.

I had payed extra attention to every single syllable he said, making a note of all the small details he told me, like tips on how to get free fries from a nearby fast-food place, cynical facts about American politics and how to count from one to ten in Italian. Along with what he said, I had made sure to imprint the sight in front of me in my head; it had been a picture I never wanted to forget. The sleeves of his ivory dress shirt had been bunched up effortlessly around his elbows, the creases in the material similar to the small faint wrinkles on his forehead. Thick eyebrows bobbed up and down with each twist in conversation and the reassuring grin never left his face, the stubble making him more homely rather than homeless. Every now and then, he’d run his hand through his dark brown hair, a habit I soon became familiar with.

Bills paid and drinks downed, we quickly left the restaurant and headed towards Tom’s car; the glossy black vehicle waited patiently, anticipating a new destination. I still remember the smell of the car and the view of the restaurant in the rearview mirror as Tom drove away from the area, pine scents and vicious red lights which became smaller and smaller. The streets seemed comfortably empty, void of the headache-inducing congestion that the appearance of the sun brought along, and we seemed to be driving just for the sake of it.

Tom finally stopped at what seemed to be a ledge looking over the city, covered with sparse grass and the feeling of adolescent love which clung to the air, the likes of which were only found in cliché romance movies. But there we were, twenty-one and thirty-one, clinging to each other under a blanket of a million stars. Tom got out of the car, motioning for me to follow him and slamming the door shut behind him. I followed him hastily and he plopped down onto the ground, patting a spot near him. Instinctively, I went and sat near him, my gaze flickering between the celestial bodies mapped out across the sky and the man on my left.

“You know, Ava, life is pretty unpredictable, boring and technically it means nothing – unless you’re religious, I guess.” Tom stated. He began twisting blades of brittle grass between his thumb and index finger, the weight of his words being poured onto the grass. I guess what he said was true, to a certain extent. Life was filled with sharp turns and odd angles, much like the crushed grass blades in Tom’s palm. Fragility lingered along with life, like a soulmate; it complemented life in every aspect possible.

“But I think it’s people that make life something worth living. Like people you date, or your friends and family. This town is pretty empty and there’s barely anything exciting. I’ve been there and done all that I could, but I think the realization hit me kinda late…I want to be around someone that makes this place exciting for me,” Tom explained. “Ava, I think you’re that person.”

I was young, gullible and wrapped around Tom’s fingers, because all I wanted was to mean something real. Disappointed parents, average grades and a pathetic excuse for a career had outlined the biography of my life; it all was nothing substantial. It felt like the beggar had won the lottery; what more could I have asked for? There was an attractive man, full of charm and allure, ready to love me and make me queen when I was a struggling pauper. My prayers were being answered right there and then; an angel had been sent to me to turn Hell into Heaven. It was nothing short of a miracle.

This was love, wasn’t it? He would appreciate me and I’d bask in the warm rays of attention. Endearing smiles and words of wisdom fascinated me far more than any other mediocre boy could. His fingertips held a beautiful kind of softness and care as they brushed across my face when he kissed me that night. He knew the world like the back of his hand, with each theory tucked away safely in the nooks and corners of his mind. I tasted adventure and brilliance on his lips that night and I didn’t want to give it up for even a moment. There are only so many chances you get at love.

Something worth living for.


End file.
